Firestarter Page 8

  Ivor sniggered. Zavier glared at him before returning his attention to Colton. He took a deep breath; he actually seemed nervous, the fingers of his metallic hand twitching. “Somewhere off this coast lies Aetas’s prison.”

  Liddy and Astrid stopped whispering, and Daphne’s eyes bored into Zavier. Danny frowned at the sand.

  “We know what it looks like from above,” Zavier continued, “but not up close. If we’re going to get there someday, we need more information. And you’re the best suited to help us.”

  Colton glanced at the waves. “You aren’t worried I’ll be swept away? Or run off?”

  Zavier gave him a razor-thin smile. “You won’t run.” He looked in Danny’s direction.

  And he was right, damn him.

  “How will I find it?” Colton asked. “If it even exists.”

  “It does exist. And Oceana will show you.”

  Colton tensed. Oceana, sister of Aetas. Ruler of oceans.

  “Let’s not waste time,” Zavier said, stepping aside.

  “No. I won’t be your errand boy.”

  Zavier took another deep breath, as if fighting to keep a lock on his temper, then turned to Edmund with a nod.

  With some hesitation, Edmund unholstered the gun at his belt. He pushed Danny to his knees and pressed the barrel to the back of his head.

  “No!” Colton rushed forward, but Anish blocked him. Daphne and Meena tried to move closer, but Liddy and Astrid held them back. Danny’s eyes were wide, his breathing rapid.

  Colton whirled toward Zavier, whose face was carefully blank. “You wouldn’t kill him. You still need him to talk.”

  Zavier shrugged. “You know the secret, too.”

  The words were so simple, said so calmly, but they still had their desired effect. Zavier only needed one of them: Danny or Colton. Not both.

  “I’ll go,” Colton said, his voice shaking. “Just, please—don’t do anything to him.”

  Danny looked up, his eyes rimmed in red. Beseeching. Colton had to turn away before he lost all his strength.

  He took slow steps, but as he neared the surf, he felt an all-encompassing urge to disappear under the surface, to remember what it was like to be surrounded by dark water. The tide splashed around his ankles, then swallowed his legs, his hips, his chest, until he was completely devoured.

  Colton opened his eyes—he wasn’t aware of having closed them—and remembered at the last minute not to open his mouth in wonder.

  Everything was blue. The world had been replaced with murky dimness, but it was beautiful, like permanent dusk.

  The sand and silt shifted under his feet as he moved forward, slippery plants brushing against his hands. Fish with shiny green scales darted ahead of him. A small school of red fish erupted from behind a rock when he passed.

  He wished he could stay down here forever.

  Eventually, he began his search for the prison. Zavier insisted that Aetas was trapped here, under the ocean, but Colton still wasn’t sure he believed it. Why would Chronos trap Aetas and allow time to unravel? Why wouldn’t he have stepped in or reclaimed the power of time as his own?

  Colton felt as if he’d been asleep for years, only to wake up and find the world a different place. In a sense, that was exactly what had happened.

  Something moved in the corner of his eye. He turned slowly.

  A woman stood regarding him from only a few feet away. She was abnormally tall, her body willowy under a flowing gown of blue seaweed. Her oval face was expressionless and pale, her eyes a piercing green, like a cat’s when a light shines on them.

  Colton remained perfectly still. The woman moved her head slightly, and her long, floating hair moved with her.

  You have come to see him?

  The voice in his mind was low and feminine with a hint of something trickling, like water over rocks. It seemed as natural as the ocean life around them.

  I’ve heard that Aetas can be found here, Colton replied.

  Oceana bowed her head. You are one of his own.

  Images of the sea. Aetas’s web of time. Castor.

  I was.

  I am truly sorry for what has happened to you. Oceana lifted a slender, gray-green hand, motioning him to follow. Come. I will show you.

  He wordlessly trailed behind her. The train of her gown was threaded with seashells and sand dollars. Tiny fish swam through her hair. All around her was a glow, as murky and blue as the waters over which she reigned, brightening the dark of the ocean floor.

  Oceana stepped to one side to allow Colton to take in their destination. A large circle had been cut into the bedrock, surrounded by a ring of golden light that rose like a beacon toward the surface of the ocean. Around the circle was a latticework of earth, looking very much like the bars of his former cell.

  Colton approached the opening, peering inside, but all he could see past the golden light was darkness. He felt something, though—a strange sharpness, somehow both comforting and disturbing. The cogs strapped to his back began to hum and glow.

  How far down does it go? he asked.

  Far enough.

  He examined the god again, wonder and dread warring within him. Oceana’s face was eerily still, but the rest of her was in constant motion; the slow, graceful movements of water.

  How did this happen?

  It was many years ago. Aetas gave humans too much power, and Chronos was not happy. She paused. Chronos is rarely happy. Things were once simpler, or so he said.

  She turned back to the circle. Aetas was pleased to learn the secrets of time, and to control it as he liked. But it is difficult. I could see how it strained him. Giving some of the responsibility to the humans helped.

  Looking at him again, her blue lips formed a slight smile. Aetas loved his followers. But when Chronos heard of what he had done, he banished him here. And here he has remained.

  You want him to be freed.

  Yes. I do not have many followers left. Those I do have, I spoke to in their dreams. One has listened and understood. Through the humans my brother was punished for helping, my brother may be freed.

  But if that happens …

  Oceana’s gaze met Colton’s, sea foam and frothing tide. Aetas never wanted this. To see beings like you existing, knowing how you perished, would upset him. He will reward you with sleep.

  I don’t want sleep.

  Then what do you want?

  Colton watched bubbles rise from the golden circle. A heartbeat.

  When Colton emerged from the waves, Zavier and the others hurried to meet him. Most of them, anyway; Danny was still being held at gunpoint.

  “Get that away from him,” Colton demanded. “Then I’ll tell you what I saw.”

  Zavier nodded to Edmund, who put the gun away with a look of relief. Danny gratefully closed his eyes.

  “What did you see?” Zavier asked softly.

  Colton stared at Danny, who was hunched against the wind, his face still turned away.

  “An ending,” Colton said.

  She found Danny in one of the unused corridors. It was dark with the lights turned off and no portholes cut into the metal walls. The crew had been allowing Daphne to wander now, and thanks to that, she and Meena had devised a way to execute their plan.

  But first, she needed to check on Danny.

  He sat in a shadowed corner, his legs drawn up, his head resting on his knees. He didn’t move when she settled beside him, the metal cold against her back. Danny’s hair was a mess. It usually was, but now more so than ever, like he’d run his hands through it too many times.

  Sighing, Daphne drew two cigarettes from her pocket. They were presents from Jo after she’d seen Daphne’s irritable tapping, and she’d handed them over with a wink. Daphne struck a match and lit the ends of both, then held one out. “Here.”

  Danny finally lifted his head. He looked awful. His face was drawn, with deep, sleepless bruises under his tired eyes. When she pressed the cigarette toward him, he took it between shaking fi
ngers.

  “When was the last time you ate?” she asked, taking a drag.

  He shook his head. He didn’t know.

  Daphne blew the smoke from her mouth with a relieved sigh and closed her eyes. “God, I needed that.”

  Danny, uncertain, imitated her, putting the cigarette to his lips. He held the smoke in his mouth until Daphne motioned for him to exhale. When he did, he immediately started coughing. Daphne tried not to laugh.

  “How can you and my mother stand these things? They’re disgusting.”

  Good; he was talking. “It helps. I know I shouldn’t, but I got into the habit after my own mother …”

  She trailed off, knowing she would choke on her own emotions if she said another word. It pained her to think of her mother at St. Agnes’s, wondering why Daphne hadn’t visited, maybe even worrying herself sicker because of it. If she ended up being the reason for her mother’s condition getting worse …

  Daphne took a deep, shaking breath, nursing her cigarette like a lifeline.

  Danny eyed his own before taking another, smaller pull. “It does help. It reminds me of home.” Then he buried his head again, his pale, spidery hand dangling the smoking cigarette between his fingers.

  “I’m sorry, Danny,” she whispered. “For everything.”

  Gossip flew fast on the ship. Everyone knew about Danny and Colton’s meeting, even if they didn’t know exactly what had transpired between them. But Colton had stormed out and Danny had been in a tight-lipped stupor since. Now, after the trip to the ocean, Colton was locked again in his room under Zavier’s orders.

  Back on the shore, Daphne had wanted to run in after him, hold him back. But when he’d returned, dripping and safe, she knew that he brought danger on his heels: he had seen Aetas’s prison.

  Zavier’s story was true.

  It seemed that no matter how hard she tried to clutch onto the constants of her life, they kept spinning out of her hands. Her father, dead. Her mother, sick. Matthias, a fraud. Akash, a liar. Now Zavier was trying to take away the rest of it—the Union, the clock towers, the one force on this earth worthy of the term magic.

  If Zavier got his way and freed the god of time, her life as she knew it would disappear for good.

  The cigarette was about to burn down to Danny’s fingers. She plucked it away and snuffed it out.

  “He showed you.” It wasn’t a question, and the words made Danny raise his head again. His eyes were unfocused, wary. “He showed me, too. But not on purpose.”

  “You saw. You saw what they did to him.”

  Daphne shuddered. “Yes.”

  Danny leaned his head against the wall and exhaled brokenly. His eyes began to water.

  “I had no idea,” he murmured. “Our entire history was built on a lie. No, worse—they didn’t even tell us how the towers were built. But it makes so much sense now. In Shere, when I got this—” he touched the scar on his chin—“I was bleeding all over, and time flickered. I thought I’d just been fast on the repairs, but it was something more. And Lucas in the failed Maldon tower … his blood made time restart for a moment.”

  Danny reached into his pocket, where Daphne knew he carried the small cog. “The power of our blood is the secret Zavier wants. Something powerful enough to break open the prison. But if he releases Aetas using blood …”

  “Do you think it’ll require another sacrifice?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  “I don’t know.” His face grew stony. “We can’t let him find out about it. Any of it.”

  “Agreed.”

  They sat in silence as Daphne finished her smoke. She thought about Narayan, the clock spirit she’d befriended in Lucknow. He had told her about his dreams, his memories. He, too, had been a human sacrifice so a clock tower could rise. And that little girl in Dover …

  “How could they do this?” she whispered. “How could they kill all those people?”

  “They were desperate. They thought the world was ending.”

  “It’s no excuse. And Colton … God, I can’t imagine how he must feel. He was human. He was just a normal boy with a family who loved him.”

  Danny broke. It was a quiet breaking, like eroding stone. His body curled in, agonized.

  Daphne’s hand hovered over him, uncertain. Finally, she touched his hair. She was surprised by how soft it was. “This must be hard for you.”

  “I can’t even be with him, or talk to him. He hates me.”

  “Because you told him about Zavier’s threat?” Danny nodded. “You can’t help that. He has to understand what’s at stake, here.”

  “He doesn’t care. He’d rather die than let any more towers suffer. But he’s …”

  Already dead.

  The words didn’t have to be said. They were already carved into their minds, on the walls of the dark corridor.

  Daphne snuffed out her cigarette.

  “Danny,” she said softly, “we’re going to get off this ship. Tomorrow.”

  They waited until the crew was busy with lunch.

  Meena had noticed the shift rotations pinned up in the galley one morning, every day and meal assigned to different members of the crew. She’d memorized the shifts for today, which put Liddy and Prema on lunch duty.

  “Liddy’s the one who took my gun,” she had told Daphne the other day. “I’ll steal into her room and get it back while you and Danny figure out the rest.”

  Which was how Daphne found herself loitering in the hallway closest to the hangar, constantly peeking around the corner for the signal from Danny. She had discovered a bunker-like door several corridors down, identical to others throughout the Prometheus that were able to cordon off certain sections of the ship. It had taken her a couple of days to figure out how to close and lock it, their best bet for keeping the crew from reaching the hangar quickly. That was what Danny was doing while Daphne kept lookout, ready to deal with whoever thought to come near.

  “Da—Miss Richards, what are you doing?”

  Daphne froze. She had expected Zavier, Edmund, one of the other pilots. Not Akash.

  She turned and met his confused gaze. His goggles hung around his neck, his hair disheveled. He looked as if he had just rolled out of bed after a restless nap.

  She forced her brain to whir into motion. “Decided to spy for them too, have you?” she bit out. “Are you going to tell Zavier what hallways I’m roaming?”

  Irritation crossed his face. “No.”

  “Then what I’m doing is no business of yours.”

  He sighed, running a hand through his thick hair. “Will you listen to me for just two minutes? Not even that—thirty seconds.”

  Daphne itched to look around the corner, to see if Danny or Meena had returned. “Thirty seconds,” she agreed, heart racing.

  Taken aback by her consent, he wasted a few of those seconds figuring out where to start. “I … I’m not with the rebels anymore. I mean, I wasn’t to begin with—I was more of a supporter, someone they could use to pass on a message or two.”

  “That sounds like enough involvement to be considered one of them,” Daphne replied, crossing her arms. Had Danny locked the door yet? Had Meena been caught?

  Akash frowned, but he didn’t seem angry at the barb. “I won’t deny that. I wanted—I still want—the British out of India. My parents talk about the first rebellion with fear and scorn. I don’t believe this is right, to force the British culture on my country. But … after speaking with Danny, I know the reverse is true as well. It also wasn’t right to use bloodshed and violence against the innocent.”

  Though Daphne’s arms were still crossed, she could feel herself softening. His words didn’t hold the note of desperation they’d had before, as if he could win forgiveness so long as he said the right things. This time, his words were slow and heavy, like he had to drag them out into the open.

  “I never wanted you or Meena to get caught up in this. I didn’t want to get caught up in it. But here we are.” He glanced at the metallic wall,
then rubbed his hands over his face. He looked so tired. “I don’t know what to think about Zavier’s plan, but since Meena doesn’t like it, I do not like it either. The only thing I can do on this damn ship is try to protect you. So … that’s what I’ll do. If you will let me.”

  Daphne didn’t respond, and her ears buzzed with the silence. Akash, hands burrowed deep in his jumpsuit pockets, tried not to look at her.

  “I don’t need protecting,” she said at last. “Nor does Meena. You should know that by now.”

  “I only mean that these people are unpredictable. What they want is … well, I don’t quite understand it,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “But I know it means trouble.”

  “And you think you’re the best candidate to sniff out trouble? You knew that there would be an assassination attempt on Viceroy Lytton. The chapati in Lucknow had a message stamped on it, and you knew exactly what it meant. You lied to me.”

  His dark eyes flinched. “Yes.”

  “You lied to Danny.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you want Lytton to die?”

  Akash sighed. “No. He is not a good man, but—”

  “But you were right there in that camp with Danny,” she snarled as she took a step forward, the plan momentarily forgotten in her wave of anger. “You were right there, and you did nothing! Danny was willing to risk everything to stop it, and you had the answer the whole time. And for his efforts, he got shot. Danny could have died because of you.”

  Akash studied the ground between them. The distance was only a foot, but it felt like so much more. “Yes. You’re right. And I am sorry.”

  “Have you told Danny that? Have you even tried to see him?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  “It’s up to him whether or not to forgive you. Until then, I can’t give you an answer.” Except he’ll be off this ship with the rest of us soon.

  She had asked Meena, tentatively, if she wanted to include Akash in their escape. Meena had thought it over, then shaken her head with remorse.

  “They won’t hurt him,” she’d said. “He’s already in their good graces. He can leave anytime he wishes.”